On Aug. 23, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he would support a bill whose purpose was to prevent the government from falling the next day, Israelis breathed a sigh of relief. For weeks, his coalition government had been teetering on the brink of collapse as a legal mandate to pass the state budget by Aug. 24 drew closer, with no clarity on what kind of budget the government would support. Just three months after the latest Netanyahu government had been formed, it looked like Israelis would be trudging off to the polls for the fourth time in less than two years.
That immediate crisis passed, but what Netanyahu offered was only a temporary reprieve. He extended the budget deadline by 120 days and made clear by his remarks that he was buying time, not making peace with his coalition partners. He called for coalition unity but in the same breath attacked his chief partner, Alternate Prime Minister Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party. In fact, he hadn’t even taken the trouble to tell Gantz that he had decided to support the legislation to change the deadline; like everyone else, Gantz learned of it watching the television broadcast. And so the threat of new elections still looms.
